


Nothing Here

by canadasuperhero



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, I have thoughts about where everyone was in WWII but my friends, World War II, can’t even call it an AU, this fic is me torturing Booker for three paragraphs, this is not really that fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26310709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadasuperhero/pseuds/canadasuperhero
Summary: Andy makes the choice to send Booker south.It’s meant as a kindness.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 37





	Nothing Here

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t usually write in new, active fandoms so this is a first for me but hey, it’s also WWII which is definitely not a new writing zone for me. It’s got to even out, right?
> 
> This started as me working out where they all were during the war and why — I have opinions; I’ll spare you for now — and ended up with me actively choosing to torture Booker.

When the Americans finally enter the second war, they are already in France. They were there when the first rumblings from Germany turned to the first terrified whispers from Poland and France’s subsequent declaration of war. They move as best they can within France to soften the lines, to ferry terrified, star-adorned children away to the coast and then, when Germany makes its push onto French soil, to harry German troops as they overtake stone cottages and trample fields. It has already been a long fight but as fresh American faces drop in on long-contested ground, Andy can see the writing on the wall; inevatebly, they will push up and in and the Immortals will push with them. It’s been an unseasonably cold spring; come winter they will be entrenched in ice.

Andy makes the call to send Booker south instead of following the path of the European campaign with Nicky and herself. Down into Italy and then the African continent with Joe and then further into the Pacific theatre that has opened up. It’s meant as a kindness; to spare Booker from reminders of his first life and his first string of deaths.

Nothing in this blasted war is a kindness, however. Booker meets his death over and over with the sting of salt sitting beneath stitching flesh — he falls asleep more often than not with the uneasy sensation of sand working its way out of his wounds. It isn’t the same as the mustard-gas deaths of twenty years ago which had been horrible in their own right but avoidable with time and effort. Instead his deaths here are sudden and constant, overwhelming. He heals only to be shredded once more. No one notices his deaths or his returns and so there is no escape; just an endless swath of Booker’s flesh and blood across the Solomon Islands.

If he did not find his immortality a burden before, he certainly does by the time the Americans raise a flag on Iwo Jima like it means anything at all.


End file.
